Summer Reading List, Part 2

Thanks to a well-received recommendation list from the other week’s newsletter, I decided to compile another list, with more deep cuts. Here’s what to read, part two, and in case you missed the original list, you can find it here.

All recommended reads below are part of my global journey on what consumers value today and what they want to pay for, and how this transforms business and brand growth. What consumers value and what they decide is worth paying for makes the modern aspiration economy. In contrast to traditional economy, where consumers collect commodities, Instagram followers, airline miles, and busy back-to-back schedules, in the modern aspiration economy consumers collect knowledge, taste, communities, and influence.

Companies are also really good at creating business models and brand strategies around economic value. They have a lofty goal of building a brand so strong that everyone would want to wear a t-shirt with its logo on it, yet are still trapped in the manufacturing mindset, focused on monetization, efficiency, and productivity growth. There’s a disconnect in the value they aspire to create and the value they’re actually creating.

This disconnect changes the way businesses and entire markets operate, yet the modern aspirational economy is still an understudied area in business and culture. My book, The Business of Aspiration, which aims to change that (pre-order it here), and in the meantime peruse below:

Value/Values: The Commercialization of Intimate Life, Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing, The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, The Land of Too Much, Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle, Valuing the Unique: The Economics of Singularities, Auctions: The Social Construction of Value, Textual Poacher: Television Fants & Participatory Culture,

Social/Cultural: Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativity, Pricing Beaty: The Making of a Fashion Model, Dealing in Desire, The Algorithmic Self, Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Is Justin Timberlake a Product of Cumulative Advantage?, Social Change Relies More on the Easily Influenced than the Highly Influential, The storytelling animal, Retromania: Pop Culture’s…